Weird Problems at Boot Up - ATA Controller?

Weird things going on here and haven't found much to help me:

System is P4 2GHz on an Asus P4P800 running XP SP1, latest updates.
Two hard drives on Primary IDE Channel; Plextor CD writer on Secondary
IDE Channel, and 2 HD's on an IDE ATA/133 PCI controller card.

The PROBLEM

1. Recently, boot-up started to get slow: each stage of the boot
process caused an audible click from the Primary Master;
2. Sometimes get a message: MBR error during boot up, which seems
to be ignored and boot up proceeds;
3. Sometimes get "Disk: unable to find NTLDR error, but not
often;
4. Event Viewer reports: The driver detected a controller error
on \Device\Harddisk 1 (or 3) [Primary Master and Slave]. And: ATAPI:
The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, is not ready for access yet;
5. SMART and manufacturer's disk utility failed to find problems
either with Disk 03 (Primary Slave) or Disk 01 (Primary Master;
Windows chkdsk reported no problems either. Also ran up-to-date
anti-virus program (AVG Pro) without finding any problems. Swapped out
IDE Cable - same problems.
6. Bought Acronis True Image 7.0 (www.acronis.com) in
anticipation of a HD failure and used it. (BTW, as an aside - this
program is absolutely first class, and
has a really intuitive interface: and unlike many utilities like
Norton Ghost, which has to operate in PC DOS, True Image 7.0 permits
fast, full disk image backups on the
fly while still using Windows, and it creates the image in a secure
area which can't be touched by Windows or viruses. It also allows
scheduled incremental backups while still in Windows. To say I'm
impressed by this program $38-48 would be an understatement - see
below);
7. Replaced Primary Master drive with a new 120 Gb Western
Digital yesterday and restored the backup of C:\ (40Gb) I did using
Acronis True Image to my new HD in 40 minutes flat! All was well till
I restarted, when the same problems which caused me to replace the HD
started to recur - intermittently, eg MBR error 3 and the NTLDR issue.
Rebooting several times until the BIOS recognises all the Drives
usually solves the problems though, and everything runs OK - like now;

8. Updated my BIOS a few hours ago. Same problems. I'm really
beginning to think this is a mobo ATA controller issue.


Any ideas greatly appreciated.
Anthony

Just yesterday I had a problem of not being able to burn CD's and was
getting weird errors on the hard drives while chkdsk said there is nothing
wrong. What I did was took out my Adaptec SCSI card and SCSI CDR and
replaced the CDR with an EIDE CDRW. No problems since and can burn CD's
without having to throw away anymore CD's that don't work. Take note; I did
have this SCSI card installed for over a year until just recently I upgraded
to Windows XP Pro from Windows 98 SE. I think XP is the culprit, since all
microsoft sells is beta programs and tells the public it is the final
version after you install a hundred updates after that :^(
WinLoser that's the name.


"Anthony PDC" wrote in message
...
Weird things going on here and haven't found much to help me:

System is P4 2GHz on an Asus P4P800 running XP SP1, latest updates.
Two hard drives on Primary IDE Channel; Plextor CD writer on Secondary
IDE Channel, and 2 HD's on an IDE ATA/133 PCI controller card.

The PROBLEM

1. Recently, boot-up started to get slow: each stage of the boot
process caused an audible click from the Primary Master;
2. Sometimes get a message: MBR error during boot up, which seems
to be ignored and boot up proceeds;
3. Sometimes get "Disk: unable to find NTLDR error, but not
often;
4. Event Viewer reports: The driver detected a controller error
on \Device\Harddisk 1 (or 3) [Primary Master and Slave]. And: ATAPI:
The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, is not ready for access yet;
5. SMART and manufacturer's disk utility failed to find problems
either with Disk 03 (Primary Slave) or Disk 01 (Primary Master;
Windows chkdsk reported no problems either. Also ran up-to-date
anti-virus program (AVG Pro) without finding any problems. Swapped out
IDE Cable - same problems.
6. Bought Acronis True Image 7.0 (www.acronis.com) in
anticipation of a HD failure and used it. (BTW, as an aside - this
program is absolutely first class, and
has a really intuitive interface: and unlike many utilities like
Norton Ghost, which has to operate in PC DOS, True Image 7.0 permits
fast, full disk image backups on the
fly while still using Windows, and it creates the image in a secure
area which can't be touched by Windows or viruses. It also allows
scheduled incremental backups while still in Windows. To say I'm
impressed by this program $38-48 would be an understatement - see
below);
7. Replaced Primary Master drive with a new 120 Gb Western
Digital yesterday and restored the backup of C:\ (40Gb) I did using
Acronis True Image to my new HD in 40 minutes flat! All was well till
I restarted, when the same problems which caused me to replace the HD
started to recur - intermittently, eg MBR error 3 and the NTLDR issue.
Rebooting several times until the BIOS recognises all the Drives
usually solves the problems though, and everything runs OK - like now;

8. Updated my BIOS a few hours ago. Same problems. I'm really
beginning to think this is a mobo ATA controller issue.


Any ideas greatly appreciated.
Anthony

Anthony PDC wrote:
Weird things going on here and haven't found much to help me:

System is P4 2GHz on an Asus P4P800 running XP SP1, latest updates.
Two hard drives on Primary IDE Channel; Plextor CD writer on Secondary
IDE Channel, and 2 HD's on an IDE ATA/133 PCI controller card.

The PROBLEM

1. Recently, boot-up started to get slow: each stage of the boot
process caused an audible click from the Primary Master;
2. Sometimes get a message: MBR error during boot up, which seems
to be ignored and boot up proceeds;
3. Sometimes get "Disk: unable to find NTLDR error, but not
often;
4. Event Viewer reports: The driver detected a controller error
on \Device\Harddisk 1 (or 3) [Primary Master and Slave]. And: ATAPI:
The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, is not ready for access yet;
5. SMART and manufacturer's disk utility failed to find problems
either with Disk 03 (Primary Slave) or Disk 01 (Primary Master;
Windows chkdsk reported no problems either. Also ran up-to-date
anti-virus program (AVG Pro) without finding any problems. Swapped out
IDE Cable - same problems.
6. Bought Acronis True Image 7.0 (www.acronis.com) in
anticipation of a HD failure and used it. (BTW, as an aside - this
program is absolutely first class, and
has a really intuitive interface: and unlike many utilities like
Norton Ghost, which has to operate in PC DOS, True Image 7.0 permits
fast, full disk image backups on the
fly while still using Windows, and it creates the image in a secure
area which can't be touched by Windows or viruses. It also allows
scheduled incremental backups while still in Windows. To say I'm
impressed by this program $38-48 would be an understatement - see
below);
7. Replaced Primary Master drive with a new 120 Gb Western
Digital yesterday and restored the backup of C:\ (40Gb) I did using
Acronis True Image to my new HD in 40 minutes flat! All was well till
I restarted, when the same problems which caused me to replace the HD
started to recur - intermittently, eg MBR error 3 and the NTLDR issue.
Rebooting several times until the BIOS recognises all the Drives
usually solves the problems though, and everything runs OK - like now;

8. Updated my BIOS a few hours ago. Same problems. I'm really
beginning to think this is a mobo ATA controller issue.

Almost certainly one of your IDE drives is faulty - if something on the IDE
bus goes wrong, it tends to knacker the other things on the bus too !

Things to try :

Spend $10 on brand new set of IDE cables. Get a known brand, avoid rounded
ones, and don't exceed 45cm in length per cable.
When you're connecting them all, remove and reseat all the power
connectors - it may simply be a dodgy connection.

Failing that, it may be that your power supply isn't upto the job of running
all your drives, or it may be that certain combinations of your drives don't
like being on the same channel - rearrange your Hard Drives and CDRW.